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Collision Repair  ·  General Auto Repair  ·  Tire & Wheel  ·  Auto Glass  ·  Towing & Roadside  ·  Car Wash & Detailing  ·  Background signal

What to do about it: Pull your last 20 supplements and time-stamp them — date sent, date the carrier answered, and whether the answer was in writing. That log is what a five-business-day rule is enforced with, and you need it before Oct. 18, not after. Rewrite your supplement cover sheet so every line names the OEM procedure and the policy language it falls under; a carrier that must cite policy language back to you will settle faster against a document already framed that way. Where an estimating database or a labor-rate survey drives a short pay, ask in writing for the collection date and the businesses surveyed — Washington now requires that answer, and asking creates a record everywhere else. Train whoever answers the phone to offer the customer an in-person inspection in writing. If you operate in Washington, put Oct. 18 on the calendar and read WAC 284-30-390 before then.

Everything you sell got more expensive to produce faster than the economy at large, and tires barely moved at 0.7%. The number not on this chart is the one your customer sees: motor vehicle insurance prices fell 4.5% over the same twelve months. Carriers are cutting the price of the policy while the cost of honoring it climbs, which is why estimates draw more argument than they did a year ago. Source: CPI Table 2: detailed expenditure categories, July 2026 - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Why it matters: In the July 2026 CPI detail, motor vehicle maintenance and servicing is up 7.3% over twelve months, motor vehicle repair 6.2%, maintenance and repair combined 6.6%, and parts other than tires 6.6%, against 3.4% for all items. Motor vehicle insurance fell 4.5% over the same twelve months, and 0.3% in July seasonally adjusted. Carriers are telling your customer car costs are falling while your bay costs rise at twice the headline rate — expect more pushback on estimates. Parts other than tires jumped 2.4% in July alone, the group's sharpest month, so quotes more than a few weeks old are stale. Re-price your top twenty parts lines against current supplier cost, and check that your posted labor rate has moved as much as the 6.2% repair series since last summer.

Why it matters: BAR's proposed amendment to Title 16 CCR Section 3367 ran a 45-day comment period July 10 to Aug. 24, 2026. No adoption or effective date is published. A dealer could not install, distribute or sell an airbag previously deployed, with an electrical fault, carrying a part that makes the restraint control unit read it as installed, or bearing counterfeit branding. Replacements could come only from the automaker, an authorized supplier or reseller, or a DMV-licensed dismantler — genuine, undeployed, undamaged, recall-free — receipts kept for every part. BAR puts OEM airbags for Toyota, Honda, Ford and Tesla at $500 to $1,000 each, with noncompliant units online at up to half that. Audit your airbag purchase records and drop suppliers that cannot document origin.

Why it matters: The CEC unanimously approved the Replacement Tire Efficiency Program on Aug. 17, 2026, setting minimum rolling-resistance and wet-grip standards for replacement car and light-truck tires. Phase 1 covers tires made on or after Jan. 1, 2029; stricter Phase 2 begins Jan. 1, 2033. It reaches every tire retailer, including repair dealers that sell tires. CEC puts the added cost at $1.50 per tire in Phase 1 and $6.50 in Phase 2, against $179 in fuel savings over a set's life at $4.60-a-gallon gas and $1 billion a year statewide. Competition, large off-road and all-weather winter performance tires are exempt; compliant tires are already on the market. Ask your program group which SKUs in your fastest-moving sizes comply, so you are not repricing a whole wall in 2028.

Why it matters: An Icahn Enterprises 8-K dated Aug. 20, 2026 reports Icahn Automotive Group completed the sale of The Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack Holding Corp. to Mavis Tire Supply for approximately $700 million in cash. Nearly 800 Pep Boys locations join a Mavis network now above 4,400 owned and franchised, with a much larger Western U.S. presence. Icahn kept the real estate previously transferred to it from Pep Boys, plus AAMCO and Precision Tune Auto Care. Mavis already owns Mavis Discount Tire, Midas, Express Oil Change & Tire Engineers, Brakes Plus, Tire Kingdom, NTB, Town Fair Tire and Tuffy. For an independent this is a buying-power event, not a signage change. Put any Pep Boys in your trade area on your price-shop list and re-shop your distributor terms this quarter.

Almost all the movement came from the electric side: BEV severity fell $358 between quarters while gasoline severity rose $53, cutting the premium to a record-low $729. Do not read that as EV work getting easy. OEM parts still account for 84.74% of parts dollars on a BEV estimate against 61.44% on a gasoline one, and Mitchell warns tariffs and shipping could push those parts costs back up. Source: BEV Repair Cost Premium Hits Record Low as Mitchell Warns of Parts Volatility - Autobody News

Why it matters: SB 988 passed the Assembly Aug. 24, the Senate concurred in the Assembly amendments 37-0 on Aug. 26, and it was enrolled Aug. 28, 2026. It would add Title 1.5C, commencing with Section 1784.50, to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code. As amended it covers businesses primarily engaged in automotive glass replacement, requiring them to disclose ADAS calibration needs, confirm calibration results in writing, and follow new claims-authorization procedures before completing an insured repair. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto; it is enrolled, not law. Signed or not, its disclosure text is the template other states copy. Draft the two documents it would require — a pre-work calibration notice and a post-work confirmation — and start issuing them now.

Why it matters: IIHS and its Highway Loss Data Institute compared otherwise identical 2017-22 model year vehicles with and without driver-assistance bundles. Collision claim severity ran about 10% higher on the equipped vehicles and property damage liability severity about 15% higher, with calibration named as part of the reason: replacing those sensors usually requires one. Overall losses — frequency times severity — ran about 5% lower on equipped vehicles, since the systems prevent many small, cheap crashes that dominate claim counts. The 5% is what carriers will quote; the severity numbers, from a research arm their own members fund, are what help you. Put the 10% and 15% into your next calibration reimbursement appeal with the OEM procedure that required the work.

The index sat at 207.4 in the first half of August, down 1.2% from July and level with a year earlier. This is the input insurers use for actual cash value, so a flattening index means fewer borderline cars getting pushed over the total-loss line by rising values — and more staying in your queue. CCC put total-loss frequency at a record 23.1% of all claims in 2025. Source: Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index: Mid-August 2026 Trends - Cox Automotive

Why it matters: BAR's storage-fee rulemaking — amending Title 16 Sections 3303 and 3351, adopting 3351.8.1, 3351.8.2 and 3351.8.3 — took comment Nov. 14–Dec. 31, 2025, March 27–April 13, 2026 on modified text and Aug. 13–28, 2026 on second modified text. No adoption date is published. A dealer would set storage rates from documented costs — rent, mortgage, market value, utilities, labor, liability insurance — store them at its registered primary address, notify the customer before a move and get written authorization past 20 miles. BAR would publish average and median rates by locale; insurers could not use them to suppress an individual rate. BAR's file includes a June suspension over $4,000 charged to store a car for hours. Start a cost file justifying your posted rate line by line.

Why it matters: SB 1112 would have let a registered owner, lienholder or insurer post a bond with a county court to force release of a vehicle from a tow yard or storage lot, capped at $6,250 for a company owner and $500 for an individual. Its notice-posting and fine provisions named "auto body shop" alongside towing companies and storage lots. It passed the Senate 38-0 on May 20 and cleared Assembly Judiciary 12-0 on June 16, but Assembly Appropriations held it on the Aug. 13 suspense file, so it is not moving this year. Exposure shifts back to existing law and BAR's storage-fee rulemaking, which is live and further along. The bond mechanism and the four-times-wrongful-charge penalty will return; operators who document release procedures and itemize every storage day will be ready.

What to do about it: You don't need a security program. You need multi-factor authentication on email and your accounting login, and one rule everybody follows: nobody changes bank details on the strength of an email or a call — you ring the number you already had on file and confirm. That covers most of it, and costs nothing. The part it doesn't — how the systems are set up — is the day job of our parent company, CyberSainya.

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